Path of Vengence
by yawn
Summary: A man's wife and daughter are brutally murdered and a hero must arise and face a past that threatens to destroy him. With nothing left to lose, he sets out to destroy those who hurt his family. Contains graphic violence and some language. Reader beware!
1. Chapter 1

A/n: It's honestly...Been a very long time since I've written anything. A blog here and there but nothing like a story. Haven't had the heart really. Well...Here goes. It may read kind of rough.

Rain beat down on the beat up sedan as it rumbled down the old country road. The black paint was specked with spots of gray, the headlights were a dull yellow that barely lit the road as it drove along.

The occupants were three men and a woman, each in a black suit with sunglasses. Their faces were lit by a dull green glow coming from the radio dial making them look quite eerie if anyone had been around to look at them.

The rain was pouring harder when they finally stopped, the car driving through a large bush to get into a clearing. Simultaneously (sp?) the four doors opened up and the people got out, not bothering to open up umbrellas. The driver popped open the trunk from the seat and stayed by the door, lighting up a cigarette and getting back in once the other three had gone to the back and thrown the trunk open.

A little girl was curled up against the body of her mother, sobbing against her still chest, the only thing really out of place was the tiny hole and the thin line of blood running from a hole just over the woman's right eye. The grown woman's body was stiff as they pulled her from the trunk, rigor had already set in because of the cold. The girl screamed at them to stop touching her mommy.

The woman reached under her jacket and produced a small M9 pistol with a sound suppressor on the end, the barrel going flush against the little girl's head. The girl screamed for a moment then there was a sound as if someone had punched a slab of beef and the little girl's brain matter and blood decorated the trunk. The men grabbed the little girl's corpse and tossed it to the ground by the mother. The rain washed away the blood and gore and for a moment it looked as if the girl was sleeping on her mother, as if it was peaceful.

One of the men brought up one wrist and muttered something into the microphone beneath his wrist cuff. He pressed a finger against the ear piece for a moment before walking to one of the open back doors. He withdrew a 12 gauge shotgun from a rack on the ceiling of the car and walked back to the bodies. The other people had stripped the mother's body of clothing and were placing a leotard that was slightly too small for her. It was then he recognized the hero turned mother.

When the two others had finished dressing the heroine, the man held the barrel of the shotgun roughly a half foot away from the woman's face.

He shifted his aim slightly, wanting to go for a more...disturbing effect possibly and cocked the weapon.

His finger tightened on the trigger.

And then suddenly his arms were gone. His right arm was cut off at the wrist while his left was cut off just above the elbow. Gouts of blood came from his stumps as he took a slow step back, everything going in slow motion. The weapon hit the ground and the slug that was loaded went off, the pellets hitting the woman who had shot the child in the throat and face. She was dead before she hit the ground.

The other man turned, pulling an Uzi up before firing wildly into the darkness for a moment before going still, arms falling to his sides.

The now disarmed man was kneeling on the ground and saw the attacker standing beside the Uzi wielder who fell to his knees, head rolling backwards while body fell forwards.

There had been a possibility of retalliation with this job, as there always was, but they hadn't been informed they would be going after a super hero family. The man stared into the burning, hate filled eyes of a man named Gideon, whose sword had just cleanly beheaded a man after cutting off his arms.

The driver got out of the car now, an AA12 shotgun held in his hands, cigarette in his mouth. Gideon was gone before the trigger was pulled, a flash of lightning sending the ghost away. A few seconds later he had grabbed the driver by the back of his head and driven his sword through his spine and out of his chest. He violently withdrew the blade and tossed the corpse to the side before setting his gaze on the man that was still alive, kneeling as his blood poured from his severed hand and arm.

The man's vision was blurry as Gideon knelt in front of him. He heard him say something but he didn't understand. He spoke Italian for a moment, then German, then finally English. He understood English well enough, though everything was hazy and garbled. He awoke however when one of his nipples was suddenly sliced in half. His scream of pain didn't go far in the middle of the storm. It didn't help they were in the middle of a forest either.

"Who hired you for the hit?" Gideon's voice was normally angelic, but now it was tainted with rage and hate. Emotions he rarely felt.

"Someone...Big. He was a mean guy...Black...I think." The hitman's speach was slurred, as if he'd been drinking.

Gideon decided he needed a bit more of a wake up call so he cut off the other nipple.

There were more screams before Gideon grabbed the man's face and made him look at him.

"Questioning you seems to be getting me nowhere...And you're about to die." He inched his face closer until their foreheads were pressed together. "I'll just take what I need and burn your mind before you go."

Gideon's eyes glowed white. An all consuming blaze that the dying man couldn't help but look into.

Gideon meanwhile scoured the man's brain for information on the hit and found what he needed. And then with a burst of energy he burned the man's brain, leaving the body braindead before he left his mind. He stood and kicked the bleeding and drooling man onto his back and left him to bleed to death.

He turned then to his wife and child. His sword dropped to the ground as he walked slowly towards them. Tears sprang to his eyes as grief washed over him.

He was simply too late.

The tall man dropped to his knees beside his wife's body and gently hefted her into his arms, his lips going to her forehead to kiss her alabaster white skin. "Raven my love...I couldn't protect you." He looked at her peaceful face and felt like a failure. There wasn't anything he could do for her and so he turned his attention to his daughter.

His arms went around the small girl's body after he set Raven softly on the ground and he picked her up. He brushed soft black strands of hair from her wet face and wept.

He wept for his wife, Raven. For his daughter.

For his failure.

The rain had stopped when he finally moved. The freezing rain had locked his joints up and he struggled slightly to get to his feet.

Gideon set his eyes to the south. To the city where he had met Raven and her friends the Titans.

The home of the man that had hired people to kill his wife and child.

With one last look at the bodies, he grabbed his sword slowly before leaping into the air. A sonic boom rocked the forest as the man soared through the air on his quest for vengence.

A/n: I dunno. I hope to not abandon this like I did my other Titans fic. Back then though I really didn't have an excuse. Now however I have a job and excuses not to write.

R&R please. Be kind, be harsh, be whatever. Just be honest.


	2. Chapter 2

A/n: Chapter two. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything at all in this story except for a few OCs.

"Criminals are like vermin. Bunched together in the worst little holes they can find in the world, destroying everything around them. Taking the lives of men and women and children every day...And for what? A couple extra dollars? An initiation into a gang? Because they looked at them funny?" Gideon let out a sigh as he stared at the homeless man cowering beside the dumpster, blood pooling around his feet. The woman the man had been attacking was long gone and police sirens could be heard in the distance.

"Humanity sickens me as a whole...Striving for the self rather than the greater good...We should be helping each other rather than hurting one another, but people can't see past their own problems..." His swords were sheathed on his back. The fallen hero was dirty, he hadn't bathed in a few days and blood was caked onto his hands and arms, the sticky substance had dried and was slowly beginning to turn a shade of brown. "I understand why you did it, but that doesn't make it right. I had to stop you or she would have died..."

The homeless man didn't respond. He was still, eyes staring off to nowhere.

Gideon felt another wave of sadness wash over him upon looking at the eyes. The act of taking a life had never settled with him very well, and he had always had a buffer to keep him from going over the edge. His wife and child were gone now and there was nothing that would stop the needless blood shed.

He took off at a run when the first police car pulled up in the alley. Gideon leapt from the ground, planting a foot against a wall and began jumping back and forth in the gap until he was on the roof of the apartment complex and was running free in the bone chilling winter air.

His breath was coming out in white puffs as he sprinted, breathing always steady and easy coming.

Nothing followed him into the darkness of the night.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Ogre looked at the body of the homeless man with disgust. His Titan partner knelt beside it examining the wounds, the small man had a bow slung over his shoulder and a quiver of assorted arrows at his hip. He looked like the Green Arrow or something, but alas he was only emulating the weapons. His outfit seemed to shimmer and change into whatever color was the general of the enviroment.

"Swords. Two of them. My guess," he stood and turned, pointing to a wall some fifteen feet away, Ogre's eyes following where he was pointing, "is he was standing over there when he was mugging the victim. She says he was a man, roughly six inches taller than myself," he was a mere 5'5", "dropped from the rooftops, impaled him with two swords, and hurled him over here."

Ogre gave a small nod. It made sense to the giant of a man. There was a clear trail of blood on the ground and the dumpster was dented showing some kind of heavy impact. "The only question is where he went." The larger Titan turned slowly and looked up after a moment. "Officer that arrived on the scene first said that he went to the rooftops. Need a boost up there?"

The bow wielding Titan smirked behind his mask and gave a quick nod. One of Ogre's giant hands was near the ground in a moment, the small Titan's foot in it the next, and finally he was launched 60 feet into the air, grabbing the edge of the roof and hoisting himself up easily.

"Hey! Ranger! I think I know who it is." Ogre looked up and saw the younger man peek over the edge.

"Eh? Speak up. It's loud up hear." Ranger looked around, there were blood drops leading away from the edge, heading to one roof top, breaking to the side to another and then he lost track. Whoever it had been didn't want to be followed easily.

Back down in the alley Ogre listened to the woman speaking to him, the one who had been nearly mugged before turning and yelling up, his voice shook the buildings around them. "We're in for trouble Ranger. It's Gideon."

A moment later the smaller man landed in the alley in a crouch and looked up at the giant of a man. "If that's the case, he'll be looking for help more than likely. Probably from one of the older groups of Titans that've moved on. Find out where Raven is, I'm gonna get ahold of Beast Boy if he's still in town."

Ogre gave a nod of ascent and took off in a light jog heading out of the alley going one way while Ranger went the other.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Gideon heard the sirens. They weren't for him, but for the place that had smoke billowing up from it and gunshots ringing all around.

"Vermin..."

He was sprinting, his feet barely hitting the ground before he was taking another running step. It was a bank that was being hit up, he could see roughly seven people before he leapt from the rooftop, swords held in front of him as he flew through the air heading for one of the large windows on front of the building and roughly that many as well on the inside with hostages, the bank's closing staff and maybe two people there depositing checks at the last minute or asking about late fees or some pointless crap like that.

The wind whipped past his face, bullets as well. One hit him in the shoulder, his thick vest and heavy sweater stopped the bullet cold. There would be no saving these people from his anger or his sadness.

He smashed through the window, landing on a fairly fat man, his swords had pierced his neck and skull. The man hadn't hit the ground before Gideon had leapt from his corpse to his next victim. There was screaming and then an ugly sound of bone being snapped and flesh being torn. Another body hit the floor. Guns were going off now, all in Gideon's general direction.

Putting his swords together, Gideon swung with all of his might in a horizontal slash, the blades cut through the air fast enough to create a sonic boom. The force cut through the air like a hot knife through butter, slicing the last few men in the bank in two. The force hit the windows of the bank and the men standing oustide taking cover from the street suddenly knew pain as the windows turned into a razor hail. Some died instantly, others shortly after when the stone collumns in front of the bank slid slowly apart. The entire front of the bank came down, crushing the men outside.

In the span of a minute 14 men were killed and nearly 40 were saved.

The police were on the scene a few minutes after Gideon was gone, running over the rooftops again.

His path seemed erratic to anyone watching him, if anyone could even see the dark clothed man against the night sky, but he was heading for a long hidden spot that his wife had mentioned in passing at one point. A contact beacon to one of her friends, a woman who was in some other part of the galaxy. Something that would signal the only person he could really trust.

He had no way of knowing that Robin, now Nightwing (sp?), was already heading into the city to reactivate their friend Cyborg. Had no idea that Beast Boy was still in the city helping the new Titans get used to the grounds, get to know people and different defensive points.

Gideon reached the beacon some time later, near dawn. It was located on a recently built sky scraper, at the very top nearly brushing the clouds. The Empire building was enormous. Had cost nearly three billion dollars to build, considering it had everything in it. State of the art security, one of the largest security forces in the nation, second only to the guards of the President, and so on and so forth.

It had taken hours to scale the building on the outside. He had nearly fallen a few times, but the glass was strong and his swords didn't break them except for the neat slits that were in the giant panes of glass now. He activated the beacon and laid down beside it, letting his body finally rest.

He hadn't slept or eaten anything in the past four days now. He simply couldn't hold out anymore, and as a bright red light appeared in the clouds, his eyes closed.

A/n: Well, hope it's atleast turning into an interesting read. I know I'm rusty and I'm not familiar with the universe anymore, simply because I stopped not only reading the comics, but because Cartoon Network is available only to those with ComCast now. Bastards.

R&R please.


End file.
